RASP (Reconstruct Ancestral State in Phylogenies): a tool for historical biogeography

Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2015 Jun:87:46-9. doi: 10.1016/j.ympev.2015.03.008. Epub 2015 Mar 26.

Abstract

We announce the release of Reconstruct Ancestral State in Phylogenies (RASP), a user-friendly software package for inferring historical biogeography through reconstructing ancestral geographic distributions on phylogenetic trees. RASP utilizes the widely used Statistical-Dispersal Vicariance Analysis (S-DIVA), the Dispersal-Extinction-Cladogenesis (DEC) model (Lagrange), a Statistical DEC model (S-DEC) and BayArea. It provides a graphical user interface (GUI) to specify a phylogenetic tree or set of trees and geographic distribution constraints, draws pie charts on the nodes of a phylogenetic tree to indicate levels of uncertainty, and generates high-quality exportable graphical results. RASP can run on both Windows and Mac OS X platforms. All documentation and source code for RASP is freely available at http://mnh.scu.edu.cn/soft/blog/RASP.

Keywords: Ancestral state reconstruction; Historical biogeography; Software.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Computer Graphics
  • Genetic Speciation
  • Models, Statistical*
  • Phylogeny*
  • Phylogeography
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA
  • Software*
  • Uncertainty
  • User-Computer Interface